


RULES FOR PLAYING DEAD

by alsahm



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, post-interrogation room
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 16:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19872763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alsahm/pseuds/alsahm
Summary: Ren adjusts to life as a dead man.





	RULES FOR PLAYING DEAD

# 1\. Tʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ sᴇᴄʀᴇᴛs.

“This isn’t what we agreed on.”

Dr. Takemi is still turned away, scribbling her notes in a bleeding, wrathful script, lips twisted where she bites them.

Ren might have imagined her speaking; he blinks to attention, adjusts his glasses for the noise of it. “Sorry?”

“This,” she repeats, jabbing a thumb in his direction, “is _not_ ”—now a furious signature, before she slams her pen and then swivels to face him, crosses her arms and legs—“what we agreed upon.”

Ren is practiced enough a liar. “I don’t follow.”

She’s a good doctor so of course she knows he’s full of shit, but she indulges him. “The terms of our agreement, Amamiya-kun,” she says, gesturing between them with the clipboard, “were for me to provide prescription-grade pain killers given an average, teen male subject upon whom to safely experiment. I”—now she points to herself—“have kept up my side of the bargain. You”—and to him, as if offering her notes, and in his periphery he can make out a sketch of his bruises—“have consistently failed yours for months now, you sinewy little guinea pig. I was willing to look past it as healthy progress at first, but this”—she pulls at a particularly nasty bruise on his cheek—“is nothing _average_.”

Indeed it is not. Ren thinks about glass windows and how they don’t hurt and the weight of policemen’s shoes and how they do and massages his cheek without speaking.

The good doctor sighs to fill his silence and sets her clipboard on the desk, flipping perfunctorily, as if her record of Ren’s health will beget an answer. When it doesn’t, she drops heavily into her chair, and this time the arch of her back betrays her worry. “Amamiya-kun, in confidence. What is going on?”

Bruised ribs and broken heartstrings and sore muscles. Sae-san had him list concrete memories in his journal, helped him fill in the gaps where he was too drugged or injured or dead to piece it back together, but some moments are lost in a haze of self-preservation.

Then there’s this: He never actually saw or heard Akechi after the casino, and Makoto thought it better he not listen to their new recordings. Self-care for their zombie leader: don’t reread your one heist stand’s texts or stalk his Insta or review intelligence if it includes his commentary from immediately after he was sure he killed you.

It’s hard to visualize that for which you were not present when you lack firsthand accounts. His friends have no idea.

Dr. Takemi asks, “Do you feel safe at home?”

“What?” Holy shit. She _knows_ Sojiro. She knows that’s not what this is. “Yes. Absolutely.”

“But you’re not going to school.”

“No.” Coming here every other school day equipped with unfocusing eyes and bruises and civvies will have given that much away.

“Are you still seeing your friends?”

“Maybe too much.” Ren regrets revealing the truth the moment it’s out, and to assuage his guilt with something more complicated he dares, “Messy breakup. You know how it is.”

Something must slide into place then. Takemi reassesses his injuries, weary, maybe, that someone Ren’s age could do this to him, or else trying to form the picture of someone so bold. Then she turns away, drums her fingers on her desk.

Prescribes, “Stay here today, then. I’ve some paperwork that needs sorting.”

That suits Ren just fine.

* * *

# 2\. Tʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀʟᴏɴᴇ.

Two organized utensil drawers and one sick patient later, Futaba is awake. He knows because his phone wiggles about it; here’s what she recalls of her dream, what she’s having for ‘breakfast’, her reactions to what she missed since collapsing yesterday morning. For all her reticence in public spaces, their virtual hideout feels empty without Futaba; in school, Ren used to anticipate the late hour at which she’d rise and expedite his last few classes.

Now, he hates this. Biding time, the inanity of it all. Hates, too, that he has a new capacity to flinch at her, at any of them. He’s been meaning to silence the vibration, but somehow whenever he snatches up his phone he loses purpose, or decides that it’s not all that bad and he’s overreacting. It’s easier to be pinged and feel briefly venomous, tab-in tab-out, and leave them on read than it is to betray them with more formal disregard.

He deposits his phone behind the reception window when he waters the plant, dusts the waiting area. It’s as he’s restocking monthly pamphlets that it buzzes more determinedly against the desk’s wood, prompting Takemi to pop her bubblegum and decide, “Resolute ex.”

“What?” Ren asks, before he remembers. “Uh, no, it’s—”

Takemi puts up a hand. “Save it.” Then, waving toward the door: “Get lost, guinea pig.”

Ren swipes his things and so does. That last rumble, he discovers while loitering outside the office, wasn’t even a text; it’s his turn in Scrabble. It has been for a week. If he doesn’t make his move in the next twelve hours, Hifumi wins by default.

He shuffles his letters and his feet, deliberating. Hifumi knows it was he who died and nothing after that.

 _Bzzt_. Futaba again, wondering where he is. The answer: on his way to Sojiro’s, just back from another check-up, to which she announces that she is transferring to him her energy, with enough enthusiasm and kaomoji that when he physically arrives and she still can’t really look him in the eye, it hurts.

 _It’s so different IRL_ , he heard her whisper a couple days ago to Mona. _Like it’s not just purple for an episode and then it goes away_.

_Kinda cool._

As Futaba pushes a controller into his hands, Morgana demands, “Where’ve you been?”

“Who cares,” she says, shaking her head. She points authoritatively at the TV. “Joker, healbot!”

So he finds himself wedged between her and the edge of the single-seater positioned for prime viewing of the PS4, casting spells as directed, Morgana warm in his lap if backseat gaming. It takes their party multiple tries given that Ren twice tracked the wrong unit, but Futaba doesn’t seem to mind, and once the boss is defeated she goes for the double high-five.

They trade their extra- and introversion; Futaba pushes up her glasses and nods at the screen, absorbed in the post-battle cutscene, while Ren retreats into his phone. It’s not a habit of which he is fond—he wouldn’t do this before because he wasn’t raised this way, still won’t eat until all present company is served—but the monologue can’t hold his focus and the fight made him dizzy, his mind echoing their characters’ repeated battle calls. Words like _checkmate_ and _massacre_. So.

Scroll scroll scroll. It’s always airplane mode for operations like this.

“Who’s texting?” Morgana asks, nuzzling close for both pets and a glance.

“No one,” says Ren, switching apps. “What’s a seven-letter word that has P, I, E, S, two Rs, and a U?”

“Those are all terrible!” Morgana scoffs, but melts into content purring when Ren runs one hand through his fur, and with the other angles his screen to share the game’s layout. He allows Morgana to direct his letter-benching, tapping at the screen based on only a paw, and the silence could be comfortable, him and his cat and Futaba cozy enough for a blanket, but Morgana’s weight presses on his thigh harder than Ren can bear.

He scoops Morgana with one arm to reposition them. Once they’re settled, Futaba delivers pats to Morgana without looking, says to her game, “That bastard is _so_ dead. I’ve got my key item and he’s got his cat!”

To which Morgana hisses, “ _Not_ a cat! You’ll see when I get my memories back.” Then shifting his weight he murmurs, “Right, Joker?”, and in his anxiety can’t have noticed Ren’s wince.

Ren is good at lying, even to his friends. Even to himself. He says, “No doubt.”

* * *

# 3\. Tʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏ ꜰᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ.

“Shuffle,” Chihaya commands, and Ren dutifully takes the cards. She made these herself so he’s careful not to bend them, but it’s difficult to avoid with a set of cardboard that used to be cereal boxes. She wants to see what happens when his wild card hands touch the deck most attuned to her heart, he thinks; else they could use plastic for such recreation.

Ann should be at Leblanc by now. When she announced she was on her way Morgana cheered and so did Futaba, and Ren made a show of checking his phone on airplane mode, realizing that actually he had an appointment, but he’ll catch up with the others later. With school out it is more forgiving for someone his age to pull into Shinjuku hooded, so here he is, hiding from his best friends at Chihaya’s dinky stall and dealing repurposed oatmeal containers.

He lays out a spread and Chihaya inhales with such force that he swipes it back immediately.

She hmms and wets her lips but doesn’t chastise him.

Chihaya is pretty in the way girls back home were, with the kind of makeup Ann informed him is all earth. She found the fabric for her dress at a thrift store and altered it herself, having changed its fate from a slow death in the donation box to her trademark look. She’s six years older than him and probably one of his favorite people in this city, like him part-here and part-there and part-freak-of-nature even among her niche.

As he spreads another he asks, “Do you miss home?”

Undistracted she tilts her head to see past his arm at the first card. She must be able to tell what it is already, because she bites her lip even as she says, “Huh? What’d you say?”

Ren scoops it all away again. A third try, then, except this time once he’s cut the deck Chihaya puts out her palm, gestures with two fingers for its relinquishment.

“The countryside,” he says, sneaking a glance at the top. A minor arcana; meaningless, since he knows about them so little. “Do you miss it?”

“No way,” Chihaya says, nose scrunched in irritation. But she must smell something Tokyo foul, because seconds later she relents, “Maybe… A tiny bit. There was this place…” She pouts, her eyes staring up in her head, as if trying to recall the address. “He had such sweet dango. Sometimes I’d go by at the end of the day and he’d give me extra.”

Ren hums, remembers the ice cream shop a block from his old school, transplants upon its scowling lady owner a different man with a grill and a fond white cat perhaps named Hana. Chihaya coaxes the cards out of his hands like that, and he blinks at the sudden loss of both them and the reverie.

“What about you?” she presses, placing the spread with practiced hands. “What do you miss?”

The dango man. Life before he was an outlaw. Perplexedly, his ex (-friend, -ally, -whatever-the-fuck).

“Nothing that ever really existed,” he says. And even stupider things, like homework. Being stressed about money from his stupid part-time jobs. The whispering at Shujin about his being a killer.

He feels like maybe this shouldn’t be so hard. People have honestly died, Wakaba Isshiki and Haru’s father, and in their wake are mourners awaiting absolution. He’s just laying low for a while, the worst of his death a meme on 2chan, and then this will all be over. Justice will have prevailed, the world will know what it has done.

Maybe.

“Anyway,” she is saying, “if anyone can change fate, it’s you.”

She flips the final card.

Says, slowly, “Oh, Ren. There’s nothing you could have done.”

* * *

# 4\. Tʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏᴠᴇ ᴏɴ.

On the train:

Takamaki Ann  
  
**Today** 16:39  
ren!! we’re at the lil theater in yonja bb mona said u were out  
just lyk dont worry if u cant make it but let us kno if we can help w anything  
17:03  
in Shibuya  
anyone need anything  
hmm no u ok tho?  
mona says uve been all over the place…  
17:23  
ren?  
18:01  
all good  
sry bad reception  


Liar, liar, liar, away, away, away. He can’t risk the councilman being seen with him but he can trace the usual path to the airsoft, ignore thoroughly the blue door, slouch inside and stare at model guns, wonder which one it was that Akechi Goro put to his head and without remorse took the shot. He stays there until closing, loitering in the back too slow to work, and he stares at his photos and his text messages and his apps and wonders if he shat his conviction out in that jail cell, too.

* * *

# 5\. Tʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ꜰᴇᴀʀ.

It’s too perfect. In the alleyway beside Leblanc, as the lights blink off and they all slip away, he submits: [S1] [U1] [R1] [P3] [R1] [I1] [S1] [E1].

A second later and his phone is for once phonic.

“Ren!”

“Hey,” he says, and chokes on it. Her voice is a balm and an allergen; in another life, as another him, he would have never met her. Wouldn't have known the wit and heart of her, nor understood the wisdom in yielding, never known to cherish then weaponize fear.

In fact he wouldn’t have met any of them, would have stayed away, never died, never come back because he never left. He could have gone his entire life and never heard her cry like that; never been held so tightly by Futaba, known so intimately by Ann, been loved by Morgana so fully that he cannot fathom ever having not been together. Ryuji and Yusuke and Makoto and Haru too enmesh with his soul, and none of them understand, and he hopes that none of them ever have to, how successful the assault was on their leader’s psyche, Ren who dry-swallowed his fear and played leader and played bold and played dead.

They didn’t do it on purpose, they didn’t know any other choice, they don’t live in his head nor know his struggles like he has witnessed theirs, and what really killed him in the end wasn’t the heartless adults, wasn’t his friends’ desperation, wasn’t the stupid drugs, but all of the above plus its orchestration by someone in whom Ren saw something similar, with whom he tried a little too hard, hoped a little too much.

But “You’re alive,” Hifumi tells him, as he sobs to someone he does not command, and sometimes, Ren, you retreat, you regroup, you revive.

* * *

# 6\. Tʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ.

No hiding from or airplaning or ignoring that which you carry in your soul.

“Inmate,” they whisper between dreams and reality, mind and matter, “it’s almost time.”

So sleep now.

And dream.

* * *

# 7\. Tʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀʟʟ ᴇǫᴜᴀʟ.

Are we meeting at the palace today?

Not today.

Understood, Leader. :-)

You don’t have to do that in private… Or ever lol.

Haha, but it’s rather exciting, isn’t it? Although I suppose it must be normalized to you by now. Every group simply requires a chain of command to keep it accountable, after all.

I believe I’ll see you tonight. With everything I’m involved with right now, I’ll be needing caffeine to stay both alert and sane.

Will you be working? Don’t tell Sakura-san, but I do find your coffee more soothing…

I’ll be there.

But I think you might overwork yourself a little lol.

Haha, I’ll rest when I’m dead, as they say.

Who’s “they” I don’t think I like them

You should take better care of yourself.

I suppose, if it’s at our leader’s request…

Only,

you should do the same, Joker.

So, I will if you will?

Deal.

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for a p5 writers' zine! please let me know what you think below ♥
> 
> you can also [rt on twitter](https://twitter.com/lumenize/status/1152410490670370816) \+ check out the [accompanying art](https://twitter.com/p5writerszine/status/1101996178244165632) by @mercy_above!


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